Removal of dimethyl phthalate from aqueous solution by synthetic modified zeolite using Cu2O nanoparticles

In this study, a novel sodalite nanozeolite was synthesized and characterized by XRF¡ XRD¡ SEM and FTIR analysis. Cu2O nanoparticles (30-60 nm) were coated on a bed of sodalite zeolite. Results of SEM-EDX showed that the amount of copper on the bed of zeolite was 4.5 wt%. modified zeolite by Cu2O nanoparticles was used to sorption of dimethyl phthalate from aqueous solutions in batch process. Results showed that Cu2O nanoparticles have a significant effect on the dimethyl phthalate removal processing from aqueous solution and maximum adsorption rates were 92.98% (with 10, 0.4g, 55min of pH, adsorbent dose and contact time respectively for modified zeolite). The kinetic studies showed that the dimethyl phthalate sorption process was well described by the pseudo second order kinetic model. Also, Langmuir isotherm provided the best fit to the equilibrium data with maximum adsorption capacity of 20.41 mg/g for modified zeolite. Experiments showed increase of temperature has a posetive effect on the dimethyl phthalate sorption process by zeolite. Thermodynamic parameters showed that the sorption of dimethyl phthalate onto zeolite was feasible, spontaneous and endothermic under studied conditions.